eddie likes to (riddlethem) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2013-08-22 22:51:00 |
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Entry tags: | death, door: dc comics, riddler |
Who: Marta!Death and Thief!Eddie
Where: Strip club
When: before his fight~ with Batgirl
What:A long, heartfelt conversation in the middle of a strip club.
Warnings: mostly naked chicks aw yes
Marta was fairly certain that people didn’t realize how very boring a job stripping could be. It was the same few routines when she climbed up onstage, and even though their faces changed, all the customers (save a very few) were all the same. The same hungry eyes and grabby hands when she got close. Things that were different tended to stick out, beacons in the otherwise dim club. Selina always stuck out. Other women did as well, when they showed up. Regulars sometimes stuck out, just because their faces became familiar as they solidified out of the dim. Anyone with more than a passing acquaintance with respect for the girls stuck out.
And the man sitting off to the side, shoulders hunched, focused more on the glowing screen of his phone than the girls onstage, definitely stuck out.
Normally he wouldn’t have, and Marta could tell that even as she slunk herself around the pole onstage. Normally he would have blended with the other men that spent their time and cash in the club, one of the other nameless faces. From what she could see from the stage, spotlights in her eyes, he at least looked clean, nice-looking enough she supposed, but older than anyone she would ever go home with, unless he started tipping like cash was air. Cash always changed things. But he wasn’t, so she would normally have ignored him. But for that blue-white glow of his phone. And she saw an opening.
The glow of a phone meant distraction, and distraction meant an easy mark. Usually the distraction came in the form of too much of her skin too close to their faces, but a phone worked just as well. And she had to confess that it made her curious. Who came to a strip club just to sit there ignoring the girls? She was going to find out. With a tip of her head to the other girl onstage, she slipped around the side and down the few backstage steps that let her out on the main level near the man’s table. Another girl took her place as she stepped away, and she gave the hulk of security guard a distracted pat on his oversized arm as she passed.
She’d been in a girly mood earlier, so she was done up in lace and cheap fabric that masqueraded as silk, scraps of it that were supposed to be a bra and g-string, sheer enough to leave nothing to the imagination and to barely dull the glitter glint of the piercing through one shadowy nipple. Stockings had been pulled up high on her thighs, held there by seeming magic as they were clipped to nothing to keep them up. Hair down, makeup heavy on a too-young face, ink on display, she crossed the space confidently on high, high heels toward Mister Phone and eaaaaased herself down into a free chair at his table, crossing her legs almost demurely.
Then she leaned in, chin in hand, elbow on tabletop, and watched him for a long moment, waiting for the shift of his attention. When it didn’t immediately come, she cleared her throat just loud enough to be audible over the bass-heavy music, and shook her head. “I think you might have taken a wrong turn somewhere, mister.” Her voice was low, not pushed into sultry, but the natural tone of it was suited for dark sorts of clubs.
Eddie frequented these kinds of clubs mostly because he had to. The best deals were made when some idiot was face deep in some lady’s dirty pillows with his mouth covered in chicken wing sauce. He knew all the bouncers (most of them had worked for him at some point), he knew most of the dancers and he could practically name all the customers off that sat around the main stage. And, yes he probably should have looked attentive. People liked that. They liked his smart, dark, big eyes up and at full attention because it made them feel important. But, the truth was Eddie didn’t bother looking at most people for very long. He didn’t need to look like he was paying attention to hear every word. Most of all though, he kind of liked seeing people feel like they needed to work for it.
He was dressed in a black suit with a deep green tie that was all money, money, money. He had his own table and most people gave him plenty of space like fish around a shark. Eddie wasn’t in his full Riddler attire, but people tended to smell the Arkham on his skin. The smart ones did, anyway. “Hello, Marta.” He said as she sat down, brown eyes flicking up to check out what she was wearing before he hunched forward on the table and continued his texting. Yes, he knew who she was. He was good with names. He liked using names to throw people off. To put them on edge. Eddie liked pushing buttons.
When she told him he might be lost he laughed. It was dry and sharp like a crackling house fire.
“I’m putting in my time. Same as you.” He said simply, squinting at the screen, smiling and then tap tap tapped a message back. There was a time when the women here really did interest him and he had slept with a couple of the really weird ones (Nina, for example, with her short hair and bad attitude), but over time his interest diminished. It wasn’t a mystery to Eddie as to why. Every time that blonde bat let him get close enough to taste her, he wanted more. Once or twice she almost let him before she remembered who he was. That almost making him try a little harder. Flirt a little more openly. Kiss her a little harder. And, now that he and the blonde bat were temporarily working together to take down some gangsters that even the Falcone Family thought were out of control, he was sure he had a chance.
Plus, he really could text her for hours and hours in the middle of a strip club.
It took getting closer. It took the voice. It took his recognition of who she was and the easy pull of her name (which admittedly earned a tense shift of her shoulders in reaction) before she was able to put any sort of name to his own face. She didn’t usually have a thing to do with him, but that didn’t mean that she didn’t know who he was, in theory. The other girls talked, security talked, the family talked when they were there, and most of the time, Marta listened. When she was bored enough to crave distraction. And if the shadows of the club and the strange highlighting glow of his phone prevented an instant identification, well she could hardly be blamed for that.
She didn’t know him as Eddie. Oh, she knew his name, but not in the way that she could call him by it. And the crackle of his laughter (at her, which drew a bristle along her spine for just a moment until she forcibly relaxed back out of it) pulled her own attitude screaming to the surface. She leaned back, half against the table and half in her chair, uncaring that she was bare-assed against the seat that had seen things she didn’t even want to think about, and looked him over. “Hardly the same as me, Mister Riddler.” Mister Riddler. That would work for now, as she dragged eyes down over the well-cut suit coat, searching for tell-tale signs of lovely rich things to be lifted away from pockets. “I’m not the one all buttoned up and sticking out like a fucking sore thumb.”
Eddie liked being called Riddler by every single social class of Gotham. Riddler! by the rich, white jackass. Mister Riddler by the unfamiliar stripper who didn’t know what kind of man she was really dealing with. He smiled, his eyebrows cocked as he licked his lips and leaned back in his seat, one arm around the back as he kept his eyes on the screen. A flickering look at her. “Don’t you think maybe that’s the point?” Sweet, sickly sweet like bubblegum ice cream. “This is my office, sweetheart. This is a cubical farm for men who wish they had the tailor I did.” He gave her another glance, one that said he saw her eyes crawl around his suit. He also knew what she was looking for. Street rat girls who thought they were smart and tough looked for money first.
Well, she was welcome to try. He was The Riddler. The mastermind thief of Gotham. The pickpocket turned bank robber. None of his glance said any of that, though. It sung a familiar tune girls at strip clubs heard. It oozed egotism as if he believed that every woman wanted to see what was inside his suit, not just his pockets. It was a mask to cover up a challenge (and thus initiate it). Though, to be fair, narcissist was kind of Eddie’s default mode anyway.
Her eyes went wide. Innocently wide, as if she came from the most sheltered upbringing and had only just heard her first curse word. There were men that believed the act because they wanted to, though she held no belief that the man in front of her would, even for a second. “Is it the point? I wouldn’t know, sir, I’ve never been in an office before. You might have to teach me what it’s all about.” She couldn’t completely keep the sass from her voice, and it oozed thick on her tongue on ‘sir’ even though she tried to hide it away. The act dropped again between one blink and the next, though she did fold her hands in her lap, almost as an extension of the innocence. She’d seen the quick glance that had caught her own perusal, and it made her heart race with a chased sort of adrenaline. She’d been caught before she’d even begun, by someone who knew the game better than she did.
Even so, she couldn’t let it go. Like a compulsion, she pushed forward even as her mind was urging her to stop. Telling her that this was too far past the lust-drunk idiots she usually lifted extra cash from. He was too far past it. And yet... With a practiced toe-to-heel, she slipped her feet out of her shoes and extended her legs (stockings all the way up, the dark line of a seam up the back) and carefully laid them across his lap, crossed at the ankle. She lifted her gaze to his distracted one and held it there as her feet listed to the side and prodded carefully at his coat, right over his ribs. Her expression didn’t even change as she did so. She didn’t care what was in his suit, other than cash that would pay the rent and let them eat better than mass-produced, canned pasta products. If she was a little older, maybe she would know that there were better ways to make money, even while staying at the strip club, than lifting it straight from people’s pockets. Maybe she would know that all her boredom-inspired listening would have been worth something in return. But all she had for the moment was a stubborn attitude and a distinct lack of clothing. She she stared at him still, her own sort of challenge. Pay attention, it said.
He was used to girls like her pushing and touching. Like wild animals sniffing a campsite for food. Girls like her prodded, they widened their woodland creature eyes and tried to look sweet for something nice. Eddie wasn’t fooled, but sometimes he was known for giving in. The biggest pervert in Gotham didn’t say no to a good offer. Well, he used to not anyway. “Do you know what the other girls say about you, Marta?” He looked at her ankles, her toes and then up at her face as if she was completely and utterly fully clothed. Now, Eddie always had information. If you wanted to know something, even what zodiac sign your crush was, Eddie had that in his back pocket. But, he rarely gave information for free and when he did it usually wasn’t nice.
Eddie’s phone buzzed and he held up a finger like hold that thought and bit back a smile at whatever was written on the screen. A moment passed. “They say you’re too angry to be a stripper.” He said distantly, without looking at her. “They say most customers don’t fall for the fake little looks you give them. And, so it makes me wonder why. What in god’s green earth could you be so angry at, little Marta?”
She didn’t move her legs, though she did listen. To the man with the unasked for information. She even waited patiently while he checked his fucking phone, which was more than anyone should expect from her, really. She listened, and then she moved, though she knew it could likely end up with her on her ass on the floor, but she moved. If the question had been even a little softer, the tone a little different, if there had been anything gentle… but there hadn’t been.
With her shoes left on the floor, she didn’t have to worry about a wayward heel stabbing something it shouldn’t, and the chairs were just wide enough to accommodate the angles of her bony knees on either side of his hips. She perched there, one hand on the back of the chair for balance and the other going to his wrist to force the phone down for at least a second, caring just about as much as he had that she was barely clothed - and certainly not in anything that wasn’t transparent.
And the act fell. The one that was so often not quite enough. The information wasn’t new, even if he was presenting it as such. She leaned in, and the anger leaked out to puddle in the air around them along with the desperation and sex and thump of music. She lost the innocent act and she lost the flirt and her eyes snapped dark with the words that were forced into the intimate little space between their bodies, so sexual a position but with no seduction to it at all. “I don’t give a fuck what they say about me. I don’t care who falls for what, as long as there’s cash tucked in my g-string at the end of the day Mister Riddler.” And now the name came out snidely. “If you have to wonder why I’m angry, then you’re not paying enough fucking attention to this shit hole of a city.” Then she lifted the hand that had been on the back of the chair before she started talking, a man’s wallet tucked between her first and middle fingers. “Do you seriously carry your wallet in your suitcoat? Is there even anything in here?”
He lowered his phone as she leaned forward and crawled ontop of him, smile inching across his face like she was giving him exactly what he wanted. And, then the phone vanished. Not into his coat jacket, not into his pants or a sleeve. It was just gone. He slouched back in his chair and stared right back at her with that Arkham chill. His hands didn’t move to touch her, but he didn’t ask her to get off him either. “I love this city.” He told her in a dark, calm, intelligent, crazy challenge that told her she was messing with someone that was in a different league than her. Hell, if you asked the Joker, the rogue gallery was playing major league baseball while the rest of Gotham was still learning how to walk. Eddie couldn’t help but agree. He licked his lips when the wallet popped into view and he shrugged. “Wallet in my suit coat. Seems that way, huh?” He tilted his head to the side, eyes flicking over her head as he saw someone walking towards them and he flashed an easy smile.
“Hey, daddy.” Nina’s voice floated behind Marta as she circled the table and crossed her arms around Nigma’s shoulders. Nina, a tall, short-haired veteran of the place with black lipstick and piercings just about everywhere you could imagine. She stared right at Marta like a lioness guarding prey. To the outside world it looked like Eddie was getting some kind of club special, but he could feel Nina’s nails dig into his shoulder.
“Hi, Nina.” Eddie said innocent and soft like a schoolboy and he cocked his head back a little to look at her. “What do I keep in my wallet? I can’t remember?” He asked the spikey-haired goth girl and she rolled her eyes, much to his delight.
“The fuck do I care, Nigma?” She didn’t want to spoil the surprise or she really didn’t care. It was hard to tell with women. “You wanna party tonight?” And, her grip tightened around Eddie’s shoulders a little more. Eddie usually didn’t say no to her. Most people in the club knew if they needed something from the riddled man, Nina was the one to get it out of him, but something seemed off.
“No, but if you purr for me I’ll give you something nice.” He promised sweetly.
Nina leaned in close. Close enough that her lips were practically on his jaw and whispered. “Fuck you.”
“That’s my girl.” Eddie rraawrred appreciatively and pulled a couple hundred out of Nina’s ear like a birthday party magician. Nina smiled, told Marta to take care of him with a confused lit to her voice and left. In the seconds that the green man didn’t think anyone saw him, his smile faded and his brow worried like he didn’t recognize himself. Like something came over him he couldn’t control. He leaned back a little more in his chair and ran his hand through his hair. “Tell me what’s in the wallet, Marta.” Eddie asked, knowing full well what she was going to find. A couple lame riddles. Fortune cookie paper strips. Tickets to a boardwalk carnival that was over sixty years old. An unused condom from the second world war. But, not even one penny.
"This city ruins people," she replied, a whisper that had gone harsher and brittle as she stared at him. His own tone was only another hint at how different they were, the separate levels of their darkness and experience, but it didn't scare her away. She wasn't sure if she could be scared away any more. Not by the shadows of Gotham and its residents. His nonchalance about the wallet made her narrow her eyes, certain that there would be nothing of importance inside, just by his attitude.
The familiar voice straightened Marta's spine, and her eyebrows lifted at the pet name. The anger was banked for the moment, and just a hint of the sweetness was forced back onto her expression. Nina's territorial look slid off of her like water. She had no desire to claim The Riddler as her own, hadn't even known it was him when she crossed the room from the stage, and Nina could keep her sharp little claws in him for all Marta cared. When Nina leaned in, Marta leaned back, her feet tucking around the backs of The Riddler’s calves and her knees tightening just enough on his hips that she was able to keep herself balanced, the lean line of her stomach taut as she held her body still without the aid of her arms. Balance points and core strength that allowed her to move onstage were good for other things, as well.
The entire exchange between them made her roll her eyes, but she didn’t say a thing until Nina moved away. Not even a response about “taking care” of the man under her on the chair. And if her eyes hadn’t slipped back too quickly from watching Nina walk away, she would have missed that flicker of faded smile and leaked-in worry. There was only a very small part of her that she devoted to worrying about other people, but when someone like The Riddler was worried, she knew well enough to worry right along with him. Her anger faded even more and she sighed as she finally let herself sit back, her weight light enough on his knees that he wouldn’t have a problem holding her there.
“I don’t care what’s in your fucking wallet. It’s nothing I want, is it?” But she opened it anyway, slim fingers quick as they rifled through the bits of paper. She rolled her eyes at the riddles, sighed at the fortunes, practically ignored the carnival tickets. But the fucking condom almost made her smile. Older than anyone she even knew, and what good would it even do? The shadow at the corner of her mouth deepened as she bit at the inside of her lip, unwilling to give him even the slightest satisfaction of that reaction from her. “Your wallet sucks, daddy,” she finally said, folding it back on itself and returning it to where she found it, much more obvious in its round-trip travels as she lifted his coat away from his body to slide the wallet back into its pocket before laying the fabric flat again and smoothing it with one palm. And then she just looked at him.
A smile returned to his face as he watched her go through his stuff and he liked every little reaction. Especially that bit-back smirk that she was trying so hard to push down. When she looked up he laughed, letting her put the decoy wallet away. “Between you and me, I actually kind of hate it when she calls me that.” Eddie glanced over to where Nina had vanished and then sighed, dark eyes lifting up before closing. He had it bad for a girl who wasn’t here and it forced a thin, sharp pain right into the middle of his chest. It wasn’t like anything he had experienced before and part of him hoped that the girl on his lap or the woman he used to bang would fix all that for him. But, when it didn’t? That sharp push between his ribcage got simply unbearable.
“When did you start pickpocketing? You’re terrible at it. Though, I guess the learning curve in a place like this isn’t very steep.” He opened his eyes and looked right back at her before glancing down over her arms, across that Ankh tattoo on her chest and then lifted his chin up to square his gaze on her face. Nothing about his expression seemed all that titillated or even curious about her body. That didn’t stop him from asking questions, though. “I started when I was about, huh, five? No it was eight. You get good enough and then it starts to get boring. So, you rob drug stores. Boring. Then, it’s time for the big leagues. You go for a bank. And, then you wake up in a bed of money and something is still missing. A challange.”
She was still smoothing the front of his coat, fingers interested in the texture of expensive, finely woven fabric, when he gave his little confession, and she did end up smiling at that. It slipped easily into a grin with a few too many teeth. “Well I think I should just call you that from now on too, then.” There was a new glint to her eye that pulled at something full of mischief instead of anger, but his sigh chased it away again and she frowned. “Knock that off, sad sack,” she murmured, shaking her head, but then he was back to interrogating her.
“A few years back. What do you care?” A few years could have been two or ten, and she shrugged, a loose line of pale skin and dark ink. “Usually the T&A distracts them enough that I could open up their wallets right in front of their faces and they wouldn’t even notice.” She was about to say something else, but then he slipped into talking about himself, and with the lack of hands on her skin (like usually happened when the customers started talking), she found herself actually interested in what he had to say. She sat heavier on his knees, relaxing enough that the hard line of her stomach softened into a slouched curve, her hands loose on her knees, almost brushing the fabric of his coat again where it bunched around his hips. She didn’t care that she was likely wrinkling him, and didn’t feel the need to point out that particular fact.
“So… your big problem is it that you have too much money and it’s just not a challenge?” Her expression held, hovering somewhere around incredulous before she snorted and actually laughed a little. It wasn’t something seductive and it wasn’t a little girl giggle. It was an actual laugh that seemed hazy and rough from disuse, and she smiled as she bit her lips together to hold back the sound before it caught someone else’s attention. “Shit. Poor fucking baby. I feel so sorry for you and your goddamn piles of money. Where’s my tiniest violin?”
His gaze lost its intensity as she got comfortable in his lap as if they had an unsaid agreement to drop the strip club pretenses. Eddie knew he was disarming when he wanted to be, especially with women. He was small, funny and liked to talk a lot more than he liked to touch. Without the expensive suit and the swagger, Eddie didn’t fit in at all. He was too nerdy for the lumbering, dirty fingered morons that usually spent their days here. He wasn’t even all that similar to the smart mobsters with their shifty eyes and gangster code. But, that was the point, right? Stick out like a sore, green thumb.
When she gave that earnest laugh, he laughed appreciatively along with her and a flicker of disappointment twitched his lips as she tried to force it down. “Come on, you know it’s not that simple.” He said gently and his eyes unfocused as he tried to think of a way to explain it. “Imagine you had all the money in the world. A penthouse. Boats. Racing horses. All that stuff.” His eyes sharpened again, deadset on hers like he was formulating a math problem. “How long would it take you to get bored out of your mind? Look, if all I wanted was money I could do it honestly. Under my skin are five different, self-surgically placed cybernetic implants that would give the government the biggest military boner they’ve ever had. But, what’s the point?”
She saw the disappointment, had learned to read people’s expressions long ago as a survival skill, but she was at a loss as to why or what he was disappointed about. It cut her laughter even more as she tried to figure it out, but then he had moved on to something else and she did her best to keep up with him.
“I’ve never had the chance to try, so I don’t have any fucking clue how long it would take. Maybe never, I don’t know. Seems like I should be able to buy shit to keep me distracted if I had that much cash on hand.” But she never had. She sometimes had cash enough to cover the rent and her shoes, the scraps of shit she wore onstage, and whatever disgusting things she and Dell were eating that week. And sometimes she had a little more and sometimes she had a little less, but never anything that would buy boats and ponies. And her sharp gaze told him as much, that imagining such a thing might as well be impossible for her and she didn’t appreciate being reminded of it. No matter how bored he got.
She held his gaze when it zeroed in on her again, but the words shook her, and it didn’t take long for her to blink - once, twice, more - and lose the knife in her voice to something softer and shocked. “Where?” she whispered, eyes going down to the coat, his arms, his hands, looking for a sign of whatever implants he was confessing to. “Why?” The fingers that had lifted his fake wallet, sifted through it, and put it back were now around one wrist, fingertips to skin as she lifted his hand to study it with a frown. Her hair fell forward as she turned his wrist in either direction, looking for traces of things that shouldn’t be there. “What do they do?” she whispered without lifting her gaze. Most of the time she couldn’t give a shit about other people, but when something snagged her attention, she had to know everything. And then something else drew her eyes, intense and direct, back to his. “Self-surgically?”
Eddie seemed amused at that shocked look and truly it was one of his favorite reactions to pull out of just about anyone. He seemed proud of the mad scientist nonsense that he had done to himself. Proud, like a kid who blew up the gymnasium on accident during a science fair. “I like fighting with Batgirl.” He said simply, a fondness that wasn’t there before bleeding through like spilt ink over a white page. “And, the only way I can keep her from breaking all my bones is constructing the right tools.” Eddie pulled one of his hands back and fit it between them. Fingers opening it in a silent request to take her hand. It was all very polite for someone with a girl in his lap. “Do you want to touch it?” And, yes, he might have wiggled his eyebrows a little.
She just stared at him. Didn’t move, just stared. And finally, finally she shook her head. “You fight with Batgirl. ...you fucking idiot.” She sighed but looked down at his hand between them, close like some secret between children. The light in the club was dim enough that she couldn’t see any noticeable difference to it, and she shifted her weight as she hunched slightly to look at it. A long moment of study passed before she looked back up at him, expression firmly stuck in something skeptical. Do you want to touch it were never good words, in her experience, but the eyebrow wiggle was just ridiculous enough to chase away any unwanted meanings.
“Fuck,” she whispered, shaking her head at herself this time, and held her hand in a fist close to her own chest for a moment before uncurling her fingers and lowering them to trace along his and rest on his palm.
At first touch, his hands were soft and his fingers were thin and nimble. But, when she pressed down on his palm, she could feel tiny, tiny squares and lines like grooved wallpaper. Energy, almost like electricity or the hum of the smallest clockwork in existence started to tap against her fingertips and suddenly a green cube the size of a bag of sweetener popped up above her hand. It was practically transparent and glowed very faintly as it rotated. “This is an energy shield at about as small as it can go. When I touch my wrist,” He demonstrated with his other hand and the green crawled around his skin like a shiny, protective armor, “It gives me a layer of strength I wouldn’t have otherwise. I have implants in my neck and shoulders that send signals to my spinal cord and brain. Though, the software is advanced enough that it can work fine on its own.”
He held his wrist out so she could touch the green, shimmering energy. It felt like static on a television screen. Buzzing pleasantly, though not giving in at all to any pressure. “I’ve done a couple of other implants, but some of them corrupted my nervous system so I had to cut them out.” Eddie didn’t seem worried by the prospect of losing feelings in his arms or legs. He liked the thrill of it. “Once I tried to put one in my leg and I walked with a limp for about a half year. People think that cane is for show, but some of the time it is not.”
She raised an eyebrow at him when nothing felt out of the ordinary at first, about to ask if this was some strange way to get her to hold his hand, but then the texture made itself known and things started to happen. She could only blink at the faint buzz of electricity, and anything that glowed made her breath catch in her throat. It was so wrong and so beautiful, and she couldn’t pull her eyes from it, even when he began to explain everything. The words “spinal cord” and “brain” shivered in her awareness as things that shouldn’t be fucked with, but the static energy chased away those thoughts as quickly as they arrived. She’d lived in Gotham all her life, had grown up with the awareness of bats and rogues of all flavors, but maybe she’d never quite believed it could be like this. Like a quiet, sharp man with things under his skin that made him stranger than anyone else she’d ever met.
And then the quiet, sharp man began to talk about his own nervous system like it was a computer to be dissected at will, and her fingers that had been pressed to his palm wrapped around his wrist and squeezed. Her gaze pulled back up to his as the green glinted against the normally light color of her eyes, and washed out the pale tone of her own skin into something sickly and otherworldly. Canes and cutting and again back to the self-surgery, and though she would never be able to give a reason why, it upset her. “What the fuck, Eddie?” The concern and the name felt right on her tongue, like they’d been there before.
When Eddie was very small, before his mother died, he wanted to be a magician. Back then before tvs and video games, it was easy to make another kid gasp in a mix of wonder and confusion when he snapped the right card into existence or made balls vanish and appear under wooden, red cups. He liked being smart, he liked beating people at mind games, but deep down he really liked to wow people. That was part of the Gotham rogue DNA, right? So, that breath caught in her throat rummaged up a very old feeling for him from a much, much more innocent time. He liked it and Eddie could have sworn it was something good.
His expression was soft and a little curious to see how Marta would react once she wrapped her mind around most of it. But, when she snapped back to look at him with that real concern wavering, his eyes went a little wide in what felt like shock and maybe worry. “You don’t like it?” He asked, that childish tone he used with Nina earlier returning though here it was earnest and raw. Eddie didn’t know why her being upset made him upset, too. His ears turned a funny shade of pink and he looked away from her as the green crawled up his arms to vanish behind his shoulders.
She liked the soft part of his expression, something of herself filing it away in her own mind, but she didn’t have time to dwell on it. Her fingers followed the green as it receded, ending their own journey about halfway up his arm to hold fast to his elbow, her eyes tracking it to its end behind his shoulders. She couldn’t explain it, the worry that had taken up a very sudden and insistent place, heavy in the pit of her stomach. She wanted to explain it, if for no other reason than to track it down and throw it away, but it weighed there and refused to shift one bit.
“It’s awful,” she finally whispered, eyes shadowed again with the disappearance of the glowing green. She leaned in and looked down, searching for where the light had been seconds before. “And amazing,” she finally continued. “And so fucking beautiful it hurts.” The words were soft, nearly lost under the thump of music that hadn’t disappeared just because they were having a conversation in the middle of the club, girls still dancing on the stage behind Marta’s back as she sat, nearly naked, on his lap. “But so fucked up that I don’t even know what to say.” Her hand moved from elbow to behind his shoulder, pressing so carefully against the fabric, searching for anything strange. “I want to know more, but Jesus fuck, you’re talking about cutting shit out of your own body.” And why that should matter to her, she didn’t say. Couldn’t say.
A wave of reactions, changing almost in time with the strobe lights and thumping music washed over him. At first he felt like pushing her off his lap, angry that he let her close enough to see the technology he put so much work into (tech that was literally buried under his skin). Then she whispered amazing and painful beauty, which froze him in place because even though that’s how he felt about it, he had never been told so by anyone else. “Oh,” he whispered at her confusion and bewilderment. It felt like they had stumbled onto something intimate unwittingly, when really all he thought he was doing was showing her a neat trick.
Eddie didn’t mind though and he prefered a raw, honest Marta to the one that strolled up to his table from the start. “You have tattoos, it’s the same thing.” It wasn’t, they both knew it wasn’t, but Eddie treated his implants casually like they were inked on his body with erasable pen. He reached to take her hand and moved her fingers under his coat jacket to press against a circle on his back below his neck. It prickled against her touch like a pinart tablet. “Haven’t you ever wanted to improve yourself? Make yourself stronger or put up a shield that no one can get through? That’s what it’s for. It’s not that scary.” He assured her, voice so soft under the blaring music. “It’s not that screwed up at all.”
She saw the flash of anger in his eyes for that quick moment, even in the dim lights of the club, and her entire body readied itself to fight back - an instant fight or flight tension that she couldn’t quite control after letting down her guard so much. His anger was gone after that initial flash, but it left her tense and her heart beating hard for minutes after. When he froze and looked at her, she was able to just look back, eyebrows inching together in a frown, trying to figure out for herself what the hell was going on.
Her snort cut through under the music before she could stop it, because that statement was so wrong and so stupid, and her expression said as much. There was a world of difference between ink and actual technological pieces being shoved under your skin. She knew they both knew it, though, so she just shook her head instead of trying to argue. But then even the thought of arguing was replaced by more confusion when he took her hand and guided her to slip it between the heavy material of his coat and the even finer woven fabric of his shirt. Her normally cold fingers (even in the middle of summer) warmed in the heat trapped between and within his clothing, and it was almost as unsettling as the prickly circle her fingertips found.
Her eyes went wide at the hint of electricity there, a current reaching out to her, and she blinked more than necessary, staring at where her hand disappeared behind his back. “Fuck. Me,” she whispered. “What the fuck…” She was in no state of mind to answer his questions, rhetorical or not, but they wormed past who she was at the club, past years that she pretended to ignore, and her eyes shifted away from her hand to look directly at him, wider than they should be and with a sort of old-born desperation behind them. Her breath was just a little too quick (flight, not fight), and she shook her head again. It took a hard swallow to find her voice again, another hard look at his hands, her own clothing-trapped hand, but she whispered. Unsteady, unbelieving: “Fucked up…”
Across his face, little jagged lines of green and black squiggled towards his eyes. It looked like it was a trick of the strip club’s lighting or the kind of mistake your vision could make in a state of shock or fear. But, then his eyes slowly turned a neon green that matched the energy from before, mapped out across dark browns in circling geometric patterns. “This is why you should stay away from the Gotham freaks.” He told her, though it was hard to tell what he was looking at or what those neon circles were showing him. “Stick with the Falcones and the Russians. If you think this is bad, you should see what Freeze or Bane can do.” It wasn’t anything like the taunt from before. The one that told her she was so far out of her depth she’d never be able to go toe-to-toe with a guy like him. It was more of a friendly reminder. A warning and a damnation of the kind of rogue he was.
The neon green blinked, blinked and then vanished as the circle on his back stopped buzzing. Eddie was starting to feel very aware that he was basically playing house by mingling with anyone that didn’t wear a mask or spent a couple years in Arkham. Marta wasn’t built to understand, how could she? “I’m sorry.” He mumbled and then offered a weak smile. “I don’t normally have anything that scares strippers.”
Mind and body both screamed run at her, and it was evident in the tremor of her legs, knees still tight at his hips but tense with the need to get away. Her heartrate had spiked and her breath came in sometimes-gasps, but she stayed. Stubbornly. And when the jagged little lines found their way across his skin, she cursed again and lifted her free hand (fingers shaking so badly, but careful - so careful) to touch the thin skin beneath his eye, half expecting the lines to make the jump to her fingertips. “Shut up,” she murmured, “Not sitting on their laps.” She hadn’t moved in far too long, whatever was going on was obviously not a lapdance, but at the moment she didn’t care what anyone else in the club thought they were doing there in that chair. There was far more important shit to worry about.
When the lines disappeared and the glow returned, she pulled her fingers back with a jolt, though there’d been no skip shock of electricity. She stared, and then slowly waved her fingers in front of his eyes, expression shifting into a frown. She was scared - fuck yes she was - but she’d been born and raised (for what it was worth) in a shitty part of Gotham. She’d lived so much of her life with some sort of fear seeping through her veins. It wasn’t a new feeling. But this strange man with his glow-green eyes and buzzing skin was new. “Fuck that. Just ‘cause you don’t show them, right?”
Eddie didn’t quite understand why she hadn’t started running by now. Or called over her manager to start something no one in the club wanted to see. Eddie wasn’t any good in a fight, but like most rogues he could cause a hell of a scene before bouncing out of there. But, she seemed equally interested and horrified, so he didn’t feel like pushing her away. He had shown some other girls this neat little trick, but while they were spread out on his bedroom floor and drunk off whatever he let them have out of his cupboards. Nina had seen it high on a pills and bourbon cocktail and she thought it was sweet as kittens. That’s what she said. Sweet as kittens. “I only show the ones who get handsy.” He said with a smirk, dark eyes seeming empty now without those rings of neon and he tilted his head to the side as he tried to make sure she wasn’t too freaked out. He could practically feel her blood pumping through her fingers and he was sure she was shaking like a cat who heard a loud bang outside of the house.
He leaned back a little more to put a tiny distance between them, slowly spreading his fingers out as a green, thin energy shield formed and hovered just an inch away from his skin. “Look I can make it tell the time,” Eddie held his hand up a little more, the green shield moving with him. The energy shimmer, shimmered and then produced a digital clock. “I can change the intensity. See, now you can put your hand through it.” He wiggled his fingertips and the energy shield glittered until it almost vanished. If she tried to touch it, her fingers would pass right through and all she’d feel was a warm, staticky buzzing.
She couldn’t stop the automatic reactions of her body. She was scared, and while she could pretend she wasn’t, put on a show of bravado to try to fool whoever or whatever had scared her, it was hard to miss the natural reactions of too much adrenaline in her blood. Her hands still shook, and her eyes were still wide. It was difficult to tell with her normal coloring and in the dim lights of the club, but she was even paler than usual. Her heart raced enough that her pulse was a visible beat along the side of her neck, and her voice wasn’t quite as steady as it should be. But stubbornness had carried her through two decades, she’d stood up in front of men before that had frightened her, and she wasn’t going to give up on it now. So she pretended that nothing had flustered her quite as much as it actually had.
“Daddy, you haven’t seen handsy,” she leaned in just enough to whisper in his ear. She smirked as she said it, visible when she sat back on his knees again, and the tease and whisper helped to cover up the way the words wavered just a bit. And then she was laughing again, quiet and surprised but real, as he showed her a clock. Something so normal and mundane, if it weren’t for the fact that it was hovering in a green glow above his skin. She glanced up at him when it glittered and with her upper lip pulled between her teeth in a show of nerves that no one at the club ever saw, she touched her fingers to the glow and then slowly passed them through it until they reached his skin. Her fingertips went warm to the first knuckle, and she gave another little laugh, this one of disbelief. “Fuck,” she whispered again, this time looking up at him with a strangely quirked smile, like she wasn’t quite certain herself what to think of it.
And then, as quickly as it had arrived, the smile shifted into a smirk. She moved her fingertips just over his skin, through that warm buzz, and her eyes went darker with mischief as her own fingertips tingled. “Oh, I bet that’s fun to play with.”
Eddie figured that Marta here didn’t keep her emotions on her sleeve and honestly maintaining that wall of confidence was easy in a place like this. Stripping did look boring. The customers were stupid and easily manipulated on account of their dicks. He figured she probably went through weeks without showing the kind of jittery nerves she was now or the disbelieving wonderment at his light show. So, he appreciated the honesty of her smile, that weird unsexy laugh and the curiosity. He always liked a little curiosity.
The green stretched over his arm again and then broke into small, spinning particles that seemed to float wherever they wanted to. He watched her barely touch his skin and wondered how many people in strip clubs used weird tech to impress strippers. Probably close to none. “That’s the plan.” He said frankly at the notion his playthings would make for an interesting romp. Hell, he hadn’t even showed her the implant that lit his arm up in green lines and vibrated electricity from his fingertips. That was reserved for someone special.
The smile still hovered around Marta’s eyes as she watched the small particles twist and turn in the air. “Bet you could make a killer vibrator,” she teased, glancing up at him just once before returning her attention to the lights. She finally (finally) slipped her hand out from his coat with a drag of fingers that might have been a try at seduction in any other situation, but in this case was simply a reluctance on her part to lose the warmth that was trapped there. With both hands free, she touched the glowing particles with questing fingertips, wondering what else they might do (as if what she’d seen already hadn’t been enough for her). They were nearly mesmerizing to watch, and her mind wandered as she tracked them, until her thoughts took an unexpected step to the side and she blinked up at him with an expression that had suddenly gone serious as her brain played back parts of their conversation. She stared at him, gaze going intense as she tried to track where her mind wanted to take her, still jumping and skittery from the adrenaline.
He gave a geeky kind of laugh and nodded, tongue pressing inside of his mouth as he tried to look like his cybernetics were purely combat focused. Stephanie rarely let him get past that stupid body armor she ran around in as Batgirl, so he had to find a way to get through to her in that needling kind of way he operated. It was a roguish hands-on tactic of seduction, but she was kinda into that thing, wasn’t she? His thoughts drifted back to the blonde bat after that nice intermission of trying to push her out of his head and he watched Marta try to grab at the swirling particles. Some of them skirted away like scared fireflies, some waited to be captured, buzzing and wiggling between her fingers before vanishing altogether. This was nice. Calm, which wasn’t exactly what strip clubs were for, but what the hell did Eddie care?
Exhaling softly he glanced up at her and frowned at that quizzical expression. “Hmm?” He asked with a rumble of his throat and then raised his eyebrows curiously. “You look like you’re trying to do calculus. Maybe you oughta cool it on the brain power.” He teased and then with more curiosity, “What is it?”
“Please,” she rolled her eyes at him. “Like I ever even understood algebra.” She tossed the throw-away comment with a twist of her mouth, but it went back to being serious quickly enough. She finally rested her fingers on the back of his wrist and let her hand go heavy, lowering his until they both rested high on her thigh, loose and relaxed and uncaring of their positioning. She slouched as she looked at him and then sighed and shook her head.
“We got a guy that comes in here to see Tammi.” She watched him as she spoke, uncertain if she should even be saying anything. “Once, maybe twice a week. He’s quiet, and nice enough. Doesn’t talk to anyone else or even really watch anyone else. Not nearly as gross as some of them are.” She shifted and wrapped her fingers around his wrist, careful points of contact. “But he comes in just for her. And he smiles when he watches her. And he tips too much. Like. Way too fucking much. Like he doesn’t have that cash to spare, and you can tell, but he tips it anyway and he looks happy to do it.” She turned his hand palm-side up, still letting it rest on her leg, and slowly and so carefully, tapped his palm. She bit at her upper lip just once before she raised her eyebrows the tiniest bit. Her words came out too soft. “...you tipping too much, Eddie?”
His dark eyes slowly widened as she spoke, fixed on her face as she focused on his thin wrist and unthreatening hands. And, he could see the hit to the gut coming. He knew the second she started talking about some poor, nice guy in a strip club. His fingers flexed, curling in a little and his body tensed up like he was preparing himself for the blow. It still hurt, though. That soft question and tiiiiiny raise of her brow hurt like a goddamned baseball bat cracking through his middle. Eddie couldn’t blame her for it, he couldn’t even blame Stephanie. No, this was a weak spot that was just waiting to be poked after trying to cover it up for a long, long time.
“Guys like that,” Eddie said, voice a little thick. “They know something’s wrong with them. They do. Maybe he’s not that attractive, right? Or he’s bad at conversation. He knows he can get someone in his league and I’m sure he has plenty of times. But, Tammi is something else to him. Guys like that. They see something they can’t have, something better than them and they don’t want anything else.” His hand escaped its pinned position and turned over to trail fingers up her leg. Slowly, thoughtfully. Almost a caress that stopped short before it reached too far up. “She’s never going to give him a real shot, is she?”
She saw the way he braced himself, knew she should stop, but she’d already started and couldn’t divert her thoughts once they started spilling out from her. Normally, she wouldn’t have cared about the tension in his body or the wash of hurt hiding in his eyes or the thickness of his voice. Anyone else, any other time, she would have thrown harsher comments and smirked when they hit. But something was different.
“Guys like that,” she whispered, repeating, and she sighed. She moved her own hand away when he turned his over, folding her fingers together in her lap with a calm sort of posture. She glanced down at his hand, watched it move over the inked lines of a skeleton draped in saint’s robes, a globe and a scythe in its hands. Normally, she wouldn’t let a customer’s hands get close enough to caress like that, would require as much cash as she could draw out of them before she let herself even be touched without security’s intervention. But this touch was different, somehow, and she didn’t chase it away.
She reached up in response to his question, smoothing down one lapel of his coat and watching her own hand so that she wouldn’t have to look up at him again until she was ready. She finally did though, eyes soft as she shook her head. “Tammi’s got a boyfriend. Huge guy, runs security for one of the bars around here. ...she’s not looking for anyone.”
Eddie’s thumb pressed gently on that skeleton face, blocking it out so that all he could see was the garb of a saint. Something in his neck prickled and he wanted to tell her why Santa Muerte was so important to thieves. Why there were shrines up and down the southern states of America inside forgotten bus stops, under an old woman’s sink, in the backyard of a restaurant carved into a dead tree. He wondered if she knew the good luck inked on her skin or she simply saw the saintly figure around and thought it was neat. Eddie was a man of symbols. Of meaning. But, he managed to keep that to himself.
He looked up as she smoothed down half of his coat and he smiled at her. He liked how it made him feel as if she were preparing him for battle. Like she saw how fragile he was under all the tricks and ego and genius, so she was armoring him with an unseen prayer. His thumb released and formed a white halo around Santa Muerte’s skull. “My girl looks for me.” Eddie told her, though there wasn’t much courage built from that simple fact. “She chases me. She pins me to walls and kisses me until my mouth bruises. Then, she remembers who I am and pushes me away. Over and over and over.” It was easy to see how the obsession bloomed from just that, especially from a man who was known for doing the same act since he popped into Gotham’s spotlight. But, there was something noticeably aware of what it meant. That was the problem with being so smart and crazy. He knew what was wrong, he knew he was broken and unlike the Joker, the Riddler never relished in it.
She looked down at where his thumb pressed into the soft give of her thigh, watching the way he blocked out the face that was always watching over her. As much as he wondered about her, she wondered if he knew the meaning behind Santa Muerte. A look up at his expression showed that he did, and between one thought and the next, she whispered. “Don’t block her out. She watches over your kind…” A man that was rumored to be the best thief in the city - he had to be touched with some sort of favor. Marta wasn’t superstitious usually, not like that, but she could admit that maybe there were other things working in the universe than rogues, heroes, and innocent people.
The smoothing gesture of her fingers sharpened as she frowned and wrapped them around that well-cut lapel. She leaned in just enough to give him a little shake - nothing violent, but of the type to wake someone from a sound sleep. “A person can only take so much pushing before they break and shit goes south fast.” It was said with the assurance of someone who (despite her short years) had seen it happen more than once. “And other people always get caught in the crossfire when it does.” She paused, shaking her head. “Sometimes literally. And you say she looks for you, but you’ve built yourself a fucking,” she waved a hand between them, encompassing as much of his body as she could from her seated position, “shield.”
Eddie was pleased that she knew the dark lady that was tattooed across her thigh and his head rolled to the side just a tiny bit as if she answered a riddle correctly. It made him look childish. A little boy finding out a pretty stranger liked the same toys he did. He was a funny, strange man. Sometimes he wanted people to guess correctly. Sometimes it made him stomp his feet and rattle off practically incoherent rants. And, since he was so unpredictable, it was impossible for anyone to tell what he wanted people to get right and what he needed them to get wrong.
She was right, too, about what happened when people pushed too hard. That correct observation earned a more serious nod, eyes up at her face (respectfully, because Marta had earned his respect whether she realized it or not) as if they were talking strategies. “I built it so I could push back. At first.” His lip twitched and he grazed the inside of his mouth with his teeth. “Now, you’re right, it’s mostly a shield. She’s already under my skin enough, Marta. And, when I have my shields up and she’s got batarangs between her fingers it’s fun.” His voice lingered on the fun and slowly died. “It wouldn’t be so bad if she pushed me too hard. I wouldn’t have to make any choices.”
“Fun?” Both of her eyebrows went way up. “Jesus, listen to you. This is not what I was expecting when I came over here.” And for the first time, she realized just how long she’d been off the stage and with someone that hadn’t tucked a single bill into her panties or between her tits. And yes, a glance past his shoulder showed her that the bartender (more in the boss’ pocket than just about anyone else in the club) was watching her darkly between pouring drinks. Her expression wavered into a frown edged in worry for just a split second before she returned her attention to the well-suited man underneath her.
“Goddammit, figure your shit out. Either you’re into each other or you’re not, but if she’s beating on you, then it’s not. And knock it off with the ‘wouldn’t have to make choices’ talk. You sound fucking suicidal. And like the idiot women in my neighborhood that stay with their asshole boyfriends even when they’re black and blue every other week until the night he hits too hard and she ends up in the morgue.” And it bothered her. God help her, it bothered the shit out of her.
Eddie caught most things, especially when it came to a girl sitting on his lap amidst a deep conversation, but he missed that worried look over his shoulder. Deep in thought, still a little sick to the stomach about the mess Stephanie was making him and wallowing. The riddled man liked to wallow just fine, in fact he had a whole wallowing system back home that involved smashing plates and drinking scotch from a baby bottle, but now wasn’t the time. He was getting worked up because he wasn’t willing to do anything out of fear he’d lose Stephanie by doing something remarkably stupid.
So, when she compared him to a battered girlfriend he kind of laughed. Almost like a cough or a jolt. Then he smiled and shook his head, laughing a little more in a sad, but obviously amused way as if she just whispered checkmate over a good game of chess. “Goddamnit.” He told her as if that was the worst swear word he’d ever use. Eddie pressed his hand to his chest like he was swearing allegiance to the flag and said solemnly, “I promise to cut that nonsense out. Or, at the very least, reevaluate my life choices.” His voice edged on a silly and sweet. He smiled at her. Bright, simple and without all that Gotham grime that made him who he was.
Then, mid-smile, it occurred to him.
“Oh, geez.” He looked alarmed. “I didn’t- look do you need to actually do a lapdance or can I slip you some money so they don’t think I’m your gay best friend forever?”
She rolled her eyes at his pledge, even as she threw another glance at the bar, wondering how much time she had spent sitting on his lap, trying to do calculations in her head of how much she might need to make up, and not having much success with it. She was caught between exasperation and worry, but the tone of his voice and the seeming truth of that smile caught her off guard and earned a tentative smile of her own in return, though it was still tinged with darker concern.
She blinked at his alarm and the first choppy words of his own thoughts, trying to figure out what was wrong, but then his question sent a wave of relief across her face so intense that it only served to highlight how young she actually was under the ink and makeup. She folded forward for just a second, covering her face with one hand and resting her head against his shoulder, and tried to ignore how strangely comfortable it felt to be there. A quiet little laugh was pulled from her throat, a tremor of her shoulders, and when she managed to chase it away she sat back again to look at the worried expression on his face.
“Daddy, I think I could be sucking sloppy dick in the back alley for five bucks a pop and they wouldn’t care as long as I gave them a cut.” She was teasing (especially with the continued use of the pet name), smiling, but the truth of it was dark behind her eyes. “I’m not going to say no to your cash, but I’m not going to say no if you want a dance, either.” One eyebrow inched up as she smiled a little more. “Though I’ve been sitting on your lap with my tits in your face this whole time. That’s gotta be worth something.” She leaned in, whispering close to his ear. “And I let you get a little handsy too. Don’t forget that…”
He had a strange urge to wrap his arms around her when she rested her head against his shoulder, but he fought it since hugging strippers was a weird thing for even an eccentric green man to do. Instead his worried expression melted into a smile when she pulled back and he exhaled slowly through his nose. “I’ll keep that in mind.” Eddie replied dryly and then considered the lap dance. Did he need one? No, not really. And, after having a real heart to heart with this girl wouldn’t make it kind of weird?
But, Eddie didn’t move away when she leaned in. “You haven’t seen handsy.” He corrected her as his left hand moved to stick a little more cash than he gave Nina between skin and g-string. Then, his hands were off her again, this time for good and the leftover green particles faded into nothing. “Daddy needs to get back to work. See you around, Marta?”
She smiled when she felt the familiar slide of money against her skin, and though it wasn’t a lapdance, she finally pulled herself out of her slouch and, with her feet tucked again around his calves, arched her torso back in a single long curve, twisting just enough to give his hand easy access for the exchange of money. She didn’t look down, didn’t try to count the bills while she was still on his lap, and pulled herself back up so she was kneeling over him. Then, with one hand on either side of his face, she leaned down and very carefully kissed his forehead before sliding off his lap and back into her shoes.
Before she walked away, she leaned back in toward him again and, with a smirking smile, whispered near his ear, hand resting over his tie. “Go make the big money. I need a new pony.” Her hand slid over his shoulder as she walked away, headed toward the bar. Barely even slowing, she extended one hand and flipped off the bartender, holding up the cash with her other hand, and then headed backstage again.